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3.31 AVERAGE
3.31 AVERAGE
This book is super weird. It's both interesting and gross. Like rubbernecking.
The book starts heavy on the gross side by following a group of sad pickups artists that basically gamify the ability to pick up women with great success. It's a little rapey though the author repeatedly gives women a chance to back out of any sexual contact and gives the "target" women a chance to say no or leave. But the rapey tactics include (from least to most): deception, psychological tricks, and hypnosis (?!).
But then the book starts to interest us in the individuals' problems and neuroses. Plus all the psychology is interesting even if I spitefully don't want it to be. The author also dishes on a number of celebrities he met while working his regular journalism job during this time period. Then, the book keeps going and going. It's too long.
The book starts heavy on the gross side by following a group of sad pickups artists that basically gamify the ability to pick up women with great success. It's a little rapey though the author repeatedly gives women a chance to back out of any sexual contact and gives the "target" women a chance to say no or leave. But the rapey tactics include (from least to most): deception, psychological tricks, and hypnosis (?!).
But then the book starts to interest us in the individuals' problems and neuroses. Plus all the psychology is interesting even if I spitefully don't want it to be. The author also dishes on a number of celebrities he met while working his regular journalism job during this time period. Then, the book keeps going and going. It's too long.
“If there was anything I'd learned, it's that the man never chooses the woman. All he can do is give her an opportunity to choose him.” (You can fuck off.)
I have so many feelings for this book and let me tell you, none of them are good. Don’t get me wrong, I knew what I was getting into when I started reading it, but it was even worse than I expected. I only read this book for the Banging Book Club so I could listen to their podcast because those ladies are absolutely funny and amazing. The things you do for stuff you love. (10/10 podcast, totally would recommend).
The Game is about the pick-up artists’ community in North America and the author’s experience with it and being part of it. Basically, before being part of it, he was simply a writer struggling with talking to women and being around them. But, lo and behold, he actually found online a group of pick-up artists who were teaching other men how to pick up women and getting laid. They have different methods and techniques which they teach and they get paid with good money. This is what happens in the book in a nutshell. Appalling, right?
While reading this book I noticed that for most of these guys, it stopped being important to impress women, to get laid or to lose their virginity, they wanted to show off in front of other men: to be able to tell or to show that they could be with any kind of women in the world, even celebrities. And then it was when women became to them simple objects. They did not care about their feelings, they just wanted to pick them up. And women do want sometimes to have fun, to have one-night stands and to forget about their worries, but these guys considered all women to be dumb and I rolled my eyes so hard at the things Neil Strauss was writing that my head started hurting.
Moreover, this book needed A LOT of editing because after the first quarter of it, the author becomes so damn repetitive. It doesn’t help that it’s a pretty big book (around 500 pages) and I truly believe that it could be reduced to half its size. The only thing that made this easier to read was the writing, it was pretty compelling and engrossing, and it made everything seem more real. But it didn’t help that the sex scenes were so explicit, sometimes I had to skip them because they were just gross. The author just grossed me out and I really wanted to flip a table at times.
All in all, I do NOT recommend this book. It’s completely sexist and it promotes the dehumanization and objectification of women in order to boost a dude’s ego. I still can’t believe that I read reviews written by women who praised this dude. I can’t even. I know the author wrote a sequel to this book and then he had to get help because he was struggling with sex addiction and depression (like many other pick-up artists mentioned in this book), but I’m not interested in any other of his experiences with the pick-up artists community.
P.S. The scenes happening in Moldova/Transdniester/Odessa had me laughing so hard. The only funny part of this book and it was about these guys almost getting killed. I can’t.
I have so many feelings for this book and let me tell you, none of them are good. Don’t get me wrong, I knew what I was getting into when I started reading it, but it was even worse than I expected. I only read this book for the Banging Book Club so I could listen to their podcast because those ladies are absolutely funny and amazing. The things you do for stuff you love. (10/10 podcast, totally would recommend).
The Game is about the pick-up artists’ community in North America and the author’s experience with it and being part of it. Basically, before being part of it, he was simply a writer struggling with talking to women and being around them. But, lo and behold, he actually found online a group of pick-up artists who were teaching other men how to pick up women and getting laid. They have different methods and techniques which they teach and they get paid with good money. This is what happens in the book in a nutshell. Appalling, right?
While reading this book I noticed that for most of these guys, it stopped being important to impress women, to get laid or to lose their virginity, they wanted to show off in front of other men: to be able to tell or to show that they could be with any kind of women in the world, even celebrities. And then it was when women became to them simple objects. They did not care about their feelings, they just wanted to pick them up. And women do want sometimes to have fun, to have one-night stands and to forget about their worries, but these guys considered all women to be dumb and I rolled my eyes so hard at the things Neil Strauss was writing that my head started hurting.
Moreover, this book needed A LOT of editing because after the first quarter of it, the author becomes so damn repetitive. It doesn’t help that it’s a pretty big book (around 500 pages) and I truly believe that it could be reduced to half its size. The only thing that made this easier to read was the writing, it was pretty compelling and engrossing, and it made everything seem more real. But it didn’t help that the sex scenes were so explicit, sometimes I had to skip them because they were just gross. The author just grossed me out and I really wanted to flip a table at times.
All in all, I do NOT recommend this book. It’s completely sexist and it promotes the dehumanization and objectification of women in order to boost a dude’s ego. I still can’t believe that I read reviews written by women who praised this dude. I can’t even. I know the author wrote a sequel to this book and then he had to get help because he was struggling with sex addiction and depression (like many other pick-up artists mentioned in this book), but I’m not interested in any other of his experiences with the pick-up artists community.
P.S. The scenes happening in Moldova/Transdniester/Odessa had me laughing so hard. The only funny part of this book and it was about these guys almost getting killed. I can’t.
The pickup artist subculture is arguably the most inadvertently funny cadre of people I can bring to mind. If you read this book and "practice any of its teachings," you are either a sociopath or, more likely, a maladjusted, misogynist nerd. The stories here are just utterly ridiculous and I straddle the line between believing none of them or all of them are true—either option is hilarious to me. Neil Strauss actually does do a decent job of revealing the humanity of these people and I found that pretty impressive. It's pretty clear by the end of the book that he's in on the joke now, that he realizes just how absurd and dehumanizing this sort of "lifestyle" is. Sometimes, you just need to read something that feels like the worst reality TV imaginable and, for the last week or so, this delivered plenty of entertainment. Do yourself a favor if you, like me, are addicted to cringeworthy and accidental humor and either read this or watch the VH1 offshoot somewhere online.
This book is the best thing I've ever read in terms of group dynamics. Yes, it has sorted sexual stories and men acting like a bunch of douches but you quickly realize that these are just normal people who were caught up in a video game or D&D session where the objective is phone numbers instead of the high score or the dragon's lair. Read this to understand how the way you present yourself is not only important to impress others but more importantly to improve yourself as a person.
Strauss' The Dirt is probably my favorite book. I tried to read this a long time ago and gave up because it was offensively retarded. I had it kicking around my computer in audiobook and gave it another try. It's extremely gossipy and less about The Game and more a personal memoir. Eh.
I somehow liked this book. I found it an engaging read even though I was not impressed with the attitudes the author and his companions often expressed towards women and each other.
I picked this up out of curiosity after a friend mentioned it while describing some recent dating puzzlements which centered around why men seem to find me irresistible mainly when I decide I've had enough of them. A secret society? Of pickup artists? Who play contrary psychological games to ensnare women? I had to know more. I thought I would abandon after getting a feel for the culture, but devoured it all the way through.
The story itself turned out to be intriguing and sad in equal measures (and not much related to my own dating woes, although it helped with playing armchair psychologist). Mostly what I learned is that there are hordes of people out there who feel disenfranchised by the opposite sex. This book focuses on men, but I am sure there are plenty of female equivalents out there. But, of course, this pick up artist stuff really has nothing to do with finding a partner. It has to do with finding power in your relationship to people of the opposite sex. In some ways, this seems to be good for some of these men. But then, as the power trip continues to spiral and faces become numbers, it becomes out of control. And unfortunately seems to feed into a cycle of negative feelings about the opposite sex. These ploys work with low self esteem women, for the most part. So these men attract low self esteem and self-destructive women, reinforcing a negative opinion of women in general, which they then carry forward into their next interactions with women. So in the end, the book isn't exactly about the gleeful seduction of flocks of beautiful women, but instead a bunch of sadsack guys faking it until they make it, then steadily unmaking themselves into soulless automatons. Some of them catch themselves before it's too late, but that's the minority.
I was expecting some self righteous feminist anger on reading this, but my overwhelming urge at the end of the book was to give these poor guys a hug.
The story itself turned out to be intriguing and sad in equal measures (and not much related to my own dating woes, although it helped with playing armchair psychologist). Mostly what I learned is that there are hordes of people out there who feel disenfranchised by the opposite sex. This book focuses on men, but I am sure there are plenty of female equivalents out there. But, of course, this pick up artist stuff really has nothing to do with finding a partner. It has to do with finding power in your relationship to people of the opposite sex. In some ways, this seems to be good for some of these men. But then, as the power trip continues to spiral and faces become numbers, it becomes out of control. And unfortunately seems to feed into a cycle of negative feelings about the opposite sex. These ploys work with low self esteem women, for the most part. So these men attract low self esteem and self-destructive women, reinforcing a negative opinion of women in general, which they then carry forward into their next interactions with women. So in the end, the book isn't exactly about the gleeful seduction of flocks of beautiful women, but instead a bunch of sadsack guys faking it until they make it, then steadily unmaking themselves into soulless automatons. Some of them catch themselves before it's too late, but that's the minority.
I was expecting some self righteous feminist anger on reading this, but my overwhelming urge at the end of the book was to give these poor guys a hug.
I'm not okay with this. It's like [b:I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell|9010|I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell|Tucker Max|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165847491s/9010.jpg|2970640] except, unlike Tucker Max, Neil Strauss has the audacity to pretend that he's an intelligent outsider rather than a woman-objectifying cad. I prefer Tucker Max. Strauss makes a point of describing his social awkwardness and stereotypically dweeby appearance, but it comes across as yet more manipulation. So you read [b:Ulysses|338798|Ulysses|James Joyce|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1330616468s/338798.jpg|2368224] every three years, for fun? Wow, Strauss, you absolutely must be the most intelligent and insightful man, and I totally forgive you for your attempt to sleep with attractive women by manipulating, because you have demonstrated not only how self-conscious you are and what an unattractive shrimp of a man you are, but also the fact that you perpetuate stereotypes about what constitutes intellectual literature and force yourself to embody the type of person who reads--and brags about reading--such literature on a schedule. How charming.
No.
No.